Time

Time is an interesting thing. There can be not near enough and occasionally way too much. As I struggle to find a balance in my life at this current stage, I am definitely battling time. I work a full-time job as previously mentioned teaching. I also teach 6 yoga classes a week; all about thirty minutes from my house. Which adds an hour to each class for travel. We are talking about roughly 45 hours a week teaching or driving to teach. Needless to say, I have an immense amount of respect for time. My time and other people's time. 

I have found that we have come to a point in our society where we want everything RIGHT NOW! I  have certainly been guilty of this. I want an answer to my question because it bothers me not to know. I will google anything immediately to find an answer, which is very satisfying. But it has kind of made me impatient. Because information is so readily available to me, I want everything and everyone to be available to me when I need them.  Of course I know this is not a realistic expectation, but it doesn't stop me from sometimes having it. Key word there is sometimes. I try very hard to be respectful of someone's time. If I am going to be late, I let them know so they aren't waiting on me. If I have a question for my sister and she is at work, I will still send it, but tell her to call me when she has time. 

In my profession, I give out my personal cell number for parents to reach me at school or even outside for school for questions or concerns. My parents are very respectful and usually only use it for emergencies or quick questions I can respond to off the top of my head. But there are those times when I get a text asking for the spelling words for the week...... on the night before the test......at 8:00 p.m........after I sent home the words on MONDAY....... in the newsletter that they obviously didn't read. At this point, I get a little frustrated about time.  I have found that if I simply don't respond, parents find those missing spelling words, with no assistance from me! Which leads me back to that immediate satisfaction and need to know now.

I think back to when we used to wonder a little more. You know when you didn't know the answer to something and you had to wait until you could ask the teacher or go to the library and look it up. That period of our lives before google or yahoo? There was actually something nice about that period of my life. I had to think. And wonder. And make an educated guess. It was pretty magical. That's where that whole time thing got a little tricky and I think we may have lost a little bit of that respect we used to have for time. So think about that as you move through your day. Wonder a little more and have a little more patience. Be respectful of your time and fill it with things you love. 

Book Review: The Rosie Project

I love to read. I would rather read a good book than watch a movie most of the time. There have been many nights I have told my husband I was going to bed early, only to read for hours before falling asleep. My fabulous book club often asks if I have read a book before assigning it, because there are so many I have read. It is actually pretty awesome because we hardly ever duplicate. The choice this month went to my darling sister, Amber. Now my sister is one of my absolute favorite people, but she usually reads crap. Not really crap, but sappy romantic novels that make me vomit just a tiny bit in my mouth. I am not romantic. At all. Just ask my husband. When she proposed that we read The Rosie Project,  I was not very excited. But I am a trooper and downloaded a copy pretty quickly so I could power through and read something gory and violent of my choosing. In reading the first few pages, I was hooked. This book made me giggle every time I picked it up. 

Our main character, Don Tillman, is a matter-of-fact and organized man. He schedules every minute of the day to be as efficient as possible. If the schedule is off, it bothers him to the point he must make an alteration somewhere else in his day. He is an accomplished geneticist and professor, with very few friends. Very few. Like two. He decides that he is at the stage in his life where he would like to find a mate. In coming to this conclusion, he decides he will solve this problem in a scientific manner, as he has not had luck in the traditional manner.

"Logically, I should be attractive to a wide range of women. In the animal kingdom, I would succeed in reproducing. However, there is something about me that women find unappealing."

He creates a The Wife Project. He designs a questionnaire, following the "best practice in questionnaire design, including multiple-choice questions, Likert scales, cross-validation, dummy questions, and surrogates." He uses this to discriminate between "suitable" and "unsuitable" mates. In the beginning of this project, in walks Rosie. She is totally unqualified and an absolutely unsuitable match for Don, which is where the fun begins. Don helps Rosie in her quest to find her father, using his knowledge of genetics and awkward social graces. While working on the project, Rosie and Don fall in love, although as Don states near the beginning of the novel: "Emotions can cause major problems." Hilarity ensues through each step of the relationship, especially as things begin to become intimate between the two.  

Overall, the book was extremely enjoyable. It had moments where I laughed out loud and moments when I wondered how any human being could possibly behave in that manner. It was a charming escape from reality, one I couldn't wait to have each night before bed. Read it. Laugh. And share it with a friend. 

     

Trapped in a car...

There are days I feel like all I do is drive from one place to another. work-home-library-yoga-home-etc. Today on one of my numerous car trips, I took my son to the orthodontist for his appointment. Now, I did have to go by the library, then home to pick him up before he actually got in the car with me, but then...I had him trapped. He was stuck with me for the 20 minute ride to the orthodontist and the 20 minute ride home. These may have been the best 40 minutes of my day. With Caleb trapped in the car, he had no room to go hide in and no computer or television to watch youtube on. It was just him and me. Talking. Pure conversation. I adore taking my son to appointments because of this time. I have found that the more "errands" I can tag on, the more time I get to spend with him where we laugh and talk about our lives. I get to actually hear what he studies at school. He tells me about his classes and what he enjoys reading and learning. We discuss other kids, family, and teachers. Through these conversations, I have learned that he is an amazing person. He is witty, smart, and quick on the draw. He laughs easily and speaks eloquently. He is exactly the kind of person I want as a friend. Which is kind of awesome because he is forced to be my friend on these car rides. I ask him to put his phone away and he does. (Unless we are googling something very important, like who stars in the new movie we want to see or a book title we have recently heard.) You see, I have found that sometimes it can be difficult for my son to open up to me. He is 14. I expected this. But that doesn't make it any easier. So on the days when he hides in his room all day and only comes down to ask what we are having for dinner, I remember these days. When he talked to me. Really talked. Because he was trapped in a car.